Factors that Influence the Entrepreneurship Intention of the Unemployed at the Time of the Economic and Health Crisis (Covid-19)

Abstract

This study is developed in the context of the pandemic in which there was a high level of layoffs, and because of this, people see entrepreneurship as a viable way to improve their situation. Due to the aforementioned, the objective of this study is to analyze the factors that influence the intention to undertake of the unemployed in Ecuador and the factors that influence the need for support to undertake. In addition, it seeks to explain the role of entrepreneurship in a crisis. For this, the information collected with the "Survey to evaluate the effects of the health crisis on workers" designed by the Department of Quantitative Economics (DEC) and Department of Mathematics (DM) of the National Polytechnic School is used. In this study, a difference is made between the unemployed due to COVID-19 and the people who were unemployed before the quarantine. To determine the answers to the proposed objectives, the Probit methodology will be used, which allows identifying the characteristics of the individuals that influence the probability of response, for which the model described is estimated as follows: model one, takes the intention to undertake as a dependent variable and is analyzed by the two types of unemployed (unemployed at cause of quarantine, permanently unemployed). To estimate the models, demographic, family and financial factors are considered, which influence people's intention to undertake in times of crisis.